


Sands of Time

by Mendax



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-01
Updated: 2012-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 22:43:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mendax/pseuds/Mendax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Brief History of Vin, as told in 32 drabbles</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sands of Time

_Ellen. Oh, Ellen._

Matt Tanner’s eyes blinked slowly closed and open again. The side of his face was gritty with sand; it had got into his gaping mouth and clung to his lips. 

_I’m shot, Ellen._

Her name still sang in his heart. His beautiful, spirited girl. He could put his hands around her waist and lift her light as a feather, but she was his strength. Always had been.

The claim jumper who’d killed him was singing now. The gold. It was _Ellen’s_ gold. For Ellen and the baby. They’d be coming to join him, as soon as he-

*

“He’s _kin_ , Joseph.”

“We can’t feed the mouths we got, and you wanna bring in another one?”

“We’re all he’s got. I won’t have Ellen’s only boy in an orphanage. I won’t. And you’ll see, he’ll be able to help out around the farm.”

Joseph sighed, fear gnawing at his gut. A five-year-old wouldn’t earn his keep anytime soon. Their cropshare last year had barely kept them all fed. Liza’s dresses were threadbare, and the children were all barefoot save Harry. Anything else went wrong, and they were lost.

“Send for ‘im then.” Liza was right. Vin Tanner was kin.

*

Reverend Wilkes passed his hand over the dead woman’s face, closing the staring, vacant blue eyes. Her face was skeletal, skin covered in rash, lips white and cracked from fever. Her son stood pale and solemn beside her, silent and cried out for now, except for his eyes. Blue like his mama's, they screamed and screamed.

 _I never asked for charity,_ she’d reminded him. No, she’d starved, and worked, and died this repulsive, stinking death. Asked for charity at the last, to get her boy to family, Arkansas sharecroppers too poor to fetch him. Too poor to feed him. _Charity._

*

She wanted so much to love him, this child with Ellen’s eyes and Ellen’s soft, expressive mouth. And sometimes it was easy. He was quiet and gentle, not prone to the tantrums Harry had pitched or Gabe’s childish, malicious cruelty. 

But when she heard him sobbing in the night and went to him, saw Anna’s eyes gleaming wide beside him in the darkness, and wrapped her arms around him, whispering, “I know; I miss her too,” his little body had stiffened and he’d lashed out, shoving her away. 

“You ain’t her,” he’d hissed, and the anger in him terrified her. 

*

Liza’s sister’s boy was good with the mule. Joseph hadn’t never seen the like. The children didn’t take to him — he’d had to tan Vin and his boys more than once for fightin’ when there was work needed doing — but that damned devil of a mule would follow Vin like an oversized dog. Saved him a heap of trouble at planting time. She’d trail Vin straight down the line, pulling the plow hard as you please, led by no more’n a string on her halter. Boy didn’t talk much neither. Joseph figured he was earning his keep after all.

*

The baby was named Ellie in memory of Aunt Ellen. Anna didn’t like it. Ma and Pa said Vin was their kin, but he insisted folk call him a Tanner, like that was somethin’ better than bein’ a Sawyer. 

Anna did feel sorry for him, the way he’d lost his ma, the way he’d wake up bawling, but she hated to see his haunted eyes fixed on the tiny body like he could will her next breath. He had no right. Ellie was _theirs_ , not Vin's. And when God took her home, Anna told him so, furious at his tears.

*

Hastings eyed the boy, conveying skepticism with a stream of tobacco-darkened spit.

“Skinny little feller,” he said.

Joseph held his temper, barely. They was all skinny. Only got half his crop in after the mule died, and what the hail hadn’t taken the landowner had. “He’s good with animals,” he said. “Hard worker. He'll make a fine apprentice.”

Hastings sighed. “I ain’t forgot how your Liza eased Polly’s last days. Reckon I can take him on.”

The accusing fear in Vin's expression was easier for Joseph to ignore than Liza's pleading tears had been. Hell. At least he'd be fed.

*

Sam Hastings hadn't figured on taking an apprentice, much less a boy still too young to wield a hammer. But he owed Liza Sawyer, and the family was plainly desperate. 

Polly would have known how to talk to the boy, would have broken through his strange quiet with warmth and gentle, flour-scented hugs. But with Polly gone, Vin worked in silence. He swept the smithy, hauled charcoal and water, fetched tools, and held the horses while Hastings trimmed and shod them. His quiet seemed to ease the horses, but it spread into the open spaces too, where their loneliness echoed.

*

"Mr. Hastings! Oh, a letter from your brother?"

"That's right, ma'am. If you have the time?"

"Of course. Let's sit down here by the light. Aaron does write such a handsomely long letter! Here we are. 'Dear Sam, I hope this letter finds you well, for I have news—' Oh! Oh, Sam, Aaron says there's silver! Only think of it! He says you should come, '—for there's more than work enough for a half dozen good smiths, and wealth for the taking.' How thrilling! Oh, but surely you won't leave us. I'm sure our little town would be quite bereft..."

*

Joseph knew letting Vin go was the right decision. Hastings had decently offered to release him from his apprenticeship, for all it had been two years he'd been feeding him without getting much back in the way of useful work, but Joseph couldn't accept. Besides, mining had killed Vin's pa; maybe the Good Lord would make amends now.

Liza wept and hugged Vin hard right there in the street, with the ox-drawn wagon laden and ready to leave. 

Joseph shook the boy's small, tough hand instead. "Reckon you're a man now, Vin Tanner. You make sure you're a good one."

*

It took half a day for the dust from their wagon train to fade from sight. It would be three days before it'd reach an outpost and send help, and two after that before riders could reach them. Sam reckoned he'd be able to move by then, or dead. His busted leg hurt so bad he almost hoped for the latter, except Vin had stayed with him, had pointed a shaking gun at the men who tried to take him with the rest of the train. Men who were trying to make it so only one of them died here. 

*

The sick man groaned so constantly the young one did not wake. Dohate took the gun right from under his hand, holding it aloft with a triumphant smile. He did wake then, but he was no good at fighting. 

Apiatan crouched over the sick man, drawing his blankets down, then pulled back with a sharp hiss. Evil spirits were in his wound, stinking purple and black, too strong for medicines. 

The boy knew. He struggled and shouted as Apiatan drew his knife and mercifully slashed the man's throat- careful of the evil in the blood- but did not look away.

*

"He was your father?"

The boy squatted by the dead man, holding one large hand in his small ones. "Ain't got a pa." 

"No man wants to die in pain, stinking his own blankets." Dohate disliked feeling the need to explain.

They examined the wagon and found many steel tools. The boy brushed past them and took a shovel.

He showed surprise when they joined him. They dug into the hard ground in silence, and filled the grave without ceremony.

Dohate nodded to the wagon. "Can you drive it?"

The boy looked startled, wary, but was expressionless when he nodded.

*

Dohate watched in amusement as Vin Tanner wearily picked himself up from the dirt and approached the small mare again. Wrapping one fist in her mane, he vaulted back onto her and nudged her into motion. The littlest children rode better than he, but he was determined. More, he understood the flow of spirit between man and horse, could speak the silent language. 

White men had taught him nothing of hunting or war or the honor of the people, and nothing about the land but how to be bound by it. But from the first Dohate saw his warrior heart.

*

Salali drew bold pigment across the parfleche. Bold for his first hunt, his first buffalo, his place in the tribe. Dohate's little whim, the crooked, ignorant white boy he had brought to her tent. Dohate had always had whims. _Too clever,_ the women said, _like Coyote._ She had wished for another man for her daughter at one time. But Dohate was brave and honorable as well as cunning, and sometimes it was hard to remember that the watchful boy he called Little Brother had not always been with them. The pigment marked her pride in the brother of her son.

*

"Did you see the boy, sir?"

Abe McKinney grimaced. He'd known Lieutenant Sharp long enough to know what was coming. "Could be a half-breed," he tried.

"With that hair and them eyes?" Sharp stared at him incredulously. "I been talking to the boys, and we're all agreed. That boy was born a Christian, and if we leave him to the damned heathens, it's on our souls, Captain." 

"And if 'the heathens' don't want to give him up?"

He vainly hoped Sharp would catch the note of warning.

"Then, sir, we ought to put down every Godless, thievin' one of them."

*

The Indians hadn't been willing to negotiate. Not a trade, not even a straight ransom for the blond-haired, blue-eyed youth in their midst. They'd insisted he was Native, as if McKinney didn't have God-damned eyes in his God-damned head.

And Sharp had spread word to nearby settlers already riled by horse-thieves and livestock killers (the first true; the second so clearly the work of wolves McKinney fought to keep his countenance). The outcry was such as to pressure him into war.

The stress was enough he thought he was hallucinating when he spied the youth riding free to the fort.

*

Captain McKinney liked to think he was not a stupid man. He had no misconceptions regarding Vin Tanner's loyalties, or that he would not gladly slit their throats while they slept. When he was not in a cell, he was handcuffed, as now. 

But when he pointed out Vin's heroism in coming to them, how the tribe had him to thank for their lives, he had been met with the proud, chilling, far-seeing stare of an Indian.

"You don't understand anything," Vin said, and McKinney felt that truth to his bones.

He couldn't wait to get the changeling sent east.

*

"Caleb says you lived with Injuns." The word dripped with scorn and disbelief. 

Reverend Paul hurried his steps before the fight could break out and found a semicircle of young men around their newest arrival. "Enough, Bache," he called. "To bed with the lot of you."

He was met with the sullen resentment typified by boys on the cusp of manhood, none stronger than from the lad for whom he'd intervened.

Reverend Paul would do his duty in bringing him back to the Lord, but the sooner Tanner was apprenticed away from the orphanage, the easier he would sleep. _Savages._

*

"I want him hung!" The jailhouse door slammed behind Will, emphasizing his parting words. 

Horse thieving on top of breaking an indenturement contract, and everyone knowing Tanner's Injun past, he probably would hang. That was, if Sheriff Gilbert had any inclination to hunt him down.

Thing was, Gilbert was fond of horses. Thought it was a damned shame how Will treated his — it had been a fine animal once. Damned shame, too, how his apprentice had started resembling the horse over the last year. Mistrustful and likelier to bite a helping hand than not. 

Gilbert wished them both well clear.

*

One-Eye Jones watched as the Barkers' new help loaded his supply wagon. Stronger than he looked. Wiry. Hard worker.

Jones shifted his plug of tobacco. "How much they pay you, boy?"

He didn't stop working. "Dollar a week, place to sleep, dinner." 

"Can you ride?"

There was something in that cocked glance, the hint of a smile. "Reckon."

"How'd you like t'earn twenty-five dollars a week?"

Unnerving how quick he was on the balls of his feet, hard and defensive. "Doin' what?" One-Eye almost reconsidered. But wasn't that what he was looking for?

"You ever hear of the Pony Express?"

*

The young men who worked for her husband may have been a disreputable lot, but Marthe Jones had grown up with brothers enough. Table manners were strictly enforced or they could blessed well go hungry, and in her house they took off their hats and called her Ma'am (though she knew she was dubbed Ol' Marthy in the bunk). 

They lived tough, and oh she was fond of them. From Fredericks and his desperation over the whore he'd fallen for to their youngest, who might have a sense of humor behind that suspicious caution, if it could be coaxed out.

*

Pahkah sighted down the rifle's long barrel, Sanaco's jibes burning in his ears. He'd won it in a raid, and he _could_ use it. The rider was out of range, but the sound should startle his horse, and the effect would show Sanaco. He squeezed the trigger slowly.

At a distance, the galloping horse crumpled from the front, eerily silent in the gun's thunder. The rider was thrown as the horse's hindquarters twisted and flipped over, and then there was nothing but stillness, and the wide-eyed look he exchanged with Sanaco. 

There was no movement from where the rider landed.

*

There was no rider.

The horse had died instantly, and Pahkah was glad it had not suffered. 

"Blood," Sanaco called. Pahkah crouched to look.

A hand clamped on his shoulder, and he leapt, spinning to face a silent, bloody-faced apparition.

"You killed my horse," the apparition said, in the language of their allies. "Guess I'll have to take yours."

"You'll have to kill me," Pahkah said, more boldly than he felt. 

"Already could have." There was a gun on his hip. He had honor. He smiled bloodily. "Fight you for it."

Then his eyes rolled back, and he fell, insensate.

*

Ahawi helped Vin to drink. He was getting stronger, and soon he would not need her care. 

Pahkah's tale provoked much interest about the young white man with knowledge of their tongue and their ways. When he had grown ill from his wounds, Ahawi had been secretly glad. Though she feared for him, his illness kept him with her.

She liked his soft voice. Liked his beautiful skin, as pale as sand, and his eyes, as blue and free as the sky. 

They shared little language. But she understood his shy smiles and the not-shy language of his healing body.

*

When he became strong again, Vin's place was tested and won. He befriended Nobah, who read the signals of men and animals on the earth, and spent long spans in the wilderness with him. But when he returned, it was to Ahawi.

He would slip in at night and uncover her feet from the blankets. Crouched there, he would lift her small foot, cup it in his hand and kiss it, rub his cheek against it until she woke, laughing. He would slide beneath the blanket in nothing but his beautiful skin.

She hoped he would marry no one else.

*

Vin Tanner had eyes that saw. And he knew almost nothing, which, to Nobah, made him a perfect friend. Nobah tired quickly of men, but humorless men who knew so much they had forgotten how to see were worst of all.

After his Ahawi died, though, one of many victims of the white man's disease that year, Vin had spent less time with the tribe. He came and went as he pleased, despite the Elders' advice to take another wife.

He would still find Nobah, though, away from the tipis. They would hunt together. Nobah would teach Vin to see.

*

Morris knew the buffalo hides he bought regular off the feller in the buckskin coat was Injun hides. But not paying Injun rates was more than made up for by not being seen to trade with 'em, so he figured everyone came out ahead.

So as he counted out his money, he said, "Be careful out there."

"Why's that?" the man rasped.

Morris tipped his head to the wanted poster tacked behind him. "Dutch McGee. Murdered a whole family. $300, dead or alive."

"Is that right?" 

He squinted at the picture, and Morris suddenly felt he'd warned the wrong man.

*

They were not dogs, to go where they were ordered and crawl for the favor of abuse. They were men, and they would fight and die as men, not beaten by a piece of paper that told only lies.

 _White men's lies,_ whispered the voice in his head.

Vin Tanner had been their friend. He had fought the white men at their side, and when Nobah fell in honor in battle, he had taken his body to its resting place. He had cut his arms before the fire and wept.

But his white skin had no more place with them.

*

 _Vin Tanner._ He'd built up quite a name for himself bounty hunting, from Indian Territory to seedy Mexican border towns. But Eli Joe was smarter than any bounty hunter.

Damned lucky that he had the same build as the sheriff's brother-in-law, a farmer named Kincaid. Easy as anything to have his boys bring Kincaid out to this lonely spot.

A shotgun to the face at close range made any lack of facial resemblance entirely moot.

He left his horse tethered there and exchanged boots with the dead man. Mounted Kincaid's horse.

He smiled. Maybe he'd come back for Tanner's hanging.

*

Virgil Watson never would understand what possessed him. Sure, Tanner was polite enough, soft-voiced and earnest when he said he was just lookin' for some honest work. But any fool could see he was a dangerous man. Stood out as wild even in a town as wild as this one.

But something convinced him, and next he knew Tanner was stocking shelves, loading wagons and sweeping up. It was like having a savage wolf letting young children tug its ears in play.

Though, given what a drunken, cowardly waste the marshal was, a wolf at his hearth was almost comforting.

*

_"Are you people just gonna let this happen?"_

She was beautiful, brave...and right. Vin turned and went inside for a gun. Innocent men being hanged struck a nerve with him these days, but it was neither that nor the spirited woman that drove him. He couldn't say what it was.

Not until the man in black, smoking a stubby cheroot, met his eyes and tipped his head toward the receding mob. Not until they fell into step side by side without a word exchanged, and Vin felt something bloom in his chest, sharp yet easeful. 

Not until he found _home._


End file.
